Love and a Successful Marriage May or May Not Go Hand in Hand
“Tell me what you love about …,” is the dumbest question the Rabbi asked — no clergyperson or therapist should ask that misguided question
For many years, I confused and intermingled the concepts of love and marriage, and between my core needs and the poor example presented to me by my parents, confusion reigned. (Poor for me, it’s worked for them).
Marriage vows need not discuss love, yet they do, thus, many believe marriage requires love, and therefore, love should lead to and maintain a marriage.
Reality is far more complex.
I spent most of my adult life, through two marriages and a few monogamous relationships before and afterward (yes, I’m a serial monogamist), being in love with each woman and thinking that each was my “soulmate.”
Was I wrong?
No. I was right every time and likely, each was a “soulmate,” through which I and hopefully each of us learned, healed, and grew.¹ I loved each one deeply, but that does not mean we romantically belonged together long-term.
Love Need Not Be Forever To Have Been Real
Unconditional
love twixt humans forever?
Perhaps, perhaps not.
Love is a state of being.
Beings constantly in flux.
Love just is. Love is a state of being — many feel one cannot fall out of true love — here’s the fallacy in that — many correctly believe that we are constantly changing — so, since love is a state of being, it is inconsistent to insist that one cannot fall out of true love. That one falls out of love does not mean the love was never true.
Love doesn’t need a reason — that’s the problem with the question the Rabbi asked Liz and me in the meeting a few weeks or so before the wedding in which he sought to get to know a bit about us. Liz gave a wonderful response, which I don’t recall. All I came up with was I love that Liz loves me and has the common sense that I lacked (then).
What a pathetic answer.
I don’t believe in regrets because I distinguish guilt. Guilt can lead to growth. Living with regret, and then the worst, shame, may lead to resentment of self. Even though there are things I wish I hadn’t done, I try not to refer to those as regrets because as long as I made amends, I grew. Everything I have done is a part of who I am now and I like myself.
“I Never Loved You”
Nevertheless, that is the closest thing I have ever said or done to raise to the level of regret.
Ten years later, when I decided I wanted out of the marriage, I never should have told Liz, the mother of my wonderful children, when I knew in my heart what I needed was beyond our capacity to create and remain healthy, that I never loved her. That was wrong.
I was wrong.
Not only was it wrong and so hurtful of me to say despite my intention to have her understand not to drag out the marriage through therapy, but also factually wrong.
I misunderstood the Rabbi.
Of course, I loved Liz. I still do. Differently.
He never should have asked me what I loved about Liz. If he had asked me what I liked about Liz, I could have listed many attributes besides her common sense. His question though caught me off guard and I stumbled through an answer. Ten years later, on the cusp of leaving the marriage, upon recalling that question and my pathetic answer, I wrongly concluded that I never loved her — and I said so and broke her heart.
I’m forever sorry. I have apologized to Liz many times for what I said and she has forgiven me and I have forgiven myself — still, I have not forgotten.
I learned — at least I hope so.
Love Would Be Great but Respect and Shared Values Can Overcome Its Absence
Ideally, a marriage would be based on both love and respect. That is my ideal, which I have yet to find, while thankfully, I suspect plenty have. I know many more have not. My ideal may not or need not be your ideal. A marriage can survive and thrive without love. It can even succeed where only one partner truly loves the other, although the empath in that I can fix the other relationship may suffer — their choice.
Love can exist in a poor marriage and keep those contractual bonds cemented. Sometimes, societal and other constructs trap people in marriages they wish they could or would escape.
It’s a personal decision that I only hope people shall make with both eyes open to their reality, and when push comes to shove, will act more out of self-love than a misguided commitment to their spouse or others (parents, siblings, de facto cult members, etc.), and if warranted, detach with love.²
Why should anyone be bound to a promise based on a mistake? I don’t think they should. Others agree with me.³ You may not. Ma Nishtana (Hebrew: מה נשתנה).⁴
People often write about the power of moving on and learning from mistakes. Why should marriage be a mistake that one cannot transcend? Because religious dogmas, which disagree with each other over the narcissism of small differences and which are designed to control and impose, say so?
I think not. We should all think for ourselves but with respect for others. That is how one can be an individual member of a family and a society.⁵
I almost added especially when it ends up being patriarchal and misogynistic, but truthfully, men suffer under this system as much as women, at least in the Western world. Yell at me if you want ladies, I’ve known too many women that work the system.
Marriages may need several reasons beyond love to survive. Each marriage and person is different. Personally, I get upset by transactional marriages.
Love’s a condition
that should not have conditions
Love with conditions
is a property exchange
It’s legal prostitution
(See White Feather’s Prostitution and Divorce, And the difference between exchange and giving, (friend link here) for the story that inspired that tanka.)
Yet, my best friend has what he admits is such a marriage, and he’s okay with it. After some struggles, including his unconditional love for another that I and others wished he would have left the marriage for, he chose to stay, not only for himself and his family but he also truly believed it was in the girlfriend’s best interest that she move on, which neither of them had been able to do from this situation that dragged for years.
To each our own.
He thinks I over-emphasize the love aspect. No. I simply know what I want.
I want it all, including, this — interdependency:
First, let’s examine what makes for a healthy marriage. Any healthy relationship stands on an interdependent foundation. What do I mean by that? The parties to the relationship share goals. They each view the other(s) as having something to contribute to those goals for everyone’s benefit. The contributions do not have to be equal but the expectations of all are understood — they don’t keep score and have no hidden agendas. They do not have to agree on everything and they can disagree, even often. That’s ok — they respect each other’s boundaries, values, and priorities. No one belongs to or feels subservient to another. Through open and vulnerable communication, they hope to share their completeness with each other and yet know that they can continue to grow. No matter how complete, no one has achieved perfection.
As great as that would be, I still need more. I need the entire package.
I must give and receive unconditional love.
I am a romantic. I believe in the existence of idealized love. I want it. I will find it. I want to grow old with my best friend, I want to walk down the streets of forever arm in arm. I want to sit on a park bench reading a book, her head in my lap reading her book as I stroke her hair. More important than sharing our highpoints, I want to share the mundane, and each other’s pain.
Those who say this doesn’t exist say so because they don’t have it.
I want the intimacy — the connection. “The purpose of a relationship is not to have another who might complete you; but to have another with whom you might share your completeness.” (From Conversations with God — Book 1). And sharing is primarily how I view sex. As Viktor Frankl writes, in addition to our primal need for sex, “sex is a mode of expression of love…love is not understood as a mere side-effect of sex; rather, sex is a way of expressing the experience of that ultimate togetherness which is called love.”
I also know what I don’t want:
Sighhhhhh. My parents. What a fucking enigma. … My father is emotionally detached from the world. He imperiously lives in his own construct of the world and everyone else, including his children, are but chess pieces in his game of life. What love he thinks he shows has strings attached. …
The enigma is how the hell they have stayed together. They constructed a world for themselves that works for them I guess, but they don’t realize that while it’s kept them together it’s not what they should want for their children. They would tell me that I seek infatuation and that real love is what they have. Bull shit. They have co-dependency.
Then much to my human friends’ chagrin, and digs that they don’t realize as such, is my acceptance of my improv script (soul contract) and karma, which free will transforms into destiny, of the relationship I treasure with Lindsey’s soul. Lindsey and I never would have made it in a relationship between humans. Ah, but the relationship I have with her soul, is priceless.
I shall end this essay with the fact that I am presently involved in a human (me) and soul (Sitara) [the name of Lindsey’s soul] relationship and thus I am never alone — I sense her presence constantly. There is room in this space for me to have a loving and sexual relationship if I meet a woman who understands without jealousy my continuing relationship with Sitara. If not, so be it.
In the back of my mind while writing this piece that sat in my drafts for over a year, were the slew of articles I read earlier last year from women saying why they would never marry again and from men saying the same thing. They all described their former partners, or the partners of current friends, as malignant narcissists or worse, borderlines — each of which I have had too much experience with. Those articles are among the worst on social media. Write what’s trending and popular and behold the flood of comments from the flock piling on, or from those purposely pissed off. I try to help by vulnerably sharing experiences from my life. I hope I succeeded in helping a few or more readers with my perspectives.
If anyone wants to dive deep into a labyrinthian rabbit hole on love:
In Rama I create, with soul energy surging through my body, inspiring me and breathing wind into my sails,
End Notes:
¹ As I once did, many have an over-romanticized definition and misguided understanding of the word soulmate. Any two people drawn together by karma into any impactful relationship are probably soulmates. Not in the way too many define karma — not to learn a lesson for some past indiscretion in this or a past life, nor a reward for doing things right. See my Revisiting Karma and the Law of Attraction (friend link here).
Rather, to meet and experience for any number of reasons what we and our soul groups, guides, and gods improvisationally scripted into what some call soul contracts.
As DL Nemeril channeled in her Your Soul Knows Why You’re Here (friend link here), and I quoted in my essay on karma:
“Here, we would like to add that we do not agree with karma meaning you have to ‘pay’ for what you did in another lifetime. That is a very human perception, of life being a court system meting out reward and punishment. Karma is a vibrational level that draws the experiences needed for healing and growth to a soul. Nothing more.”
Thus, I realized after reading DL’s channeled thoughts on karma that the law of attraction describes the vibrational pulls of our soul contracts, not what humans consciously or subconsciously emit.
By the way, I’m still friends with most of my exes, including my first wife. Here’s a story of our mutual healing.
² When Should One Detach with Love? A few examples of how I have applied this concept across a broad spectrum of relationships (friend link here)
one who stays in unrequited love is a codependent who does not have enough self love to maintain autonomy. One can detach with love from the other person. People think they need to stay attached to respect the love. That is problematic thinking and too much self-sacrifice.
³ See Douglas Giles, PhD’s I Believe in Divorce, Every ending is a beginning. (friend link here) From Douglas’s essay:
A marriage commitment absolutely should not be broken on a whim, but if both people are unhappy, what is the point of continuing? Suffering is not noble, and staying in a bad situation to fulfill a social expectation is usually the wrong course of action, or non-action in this case.
I believe in divorce because I believe in forgiveness and redemption. Every ending is also a beginning. I was married for three years. If we had stayed married, out of commitment to an abstract social ideal, we would have remained stuck, not just with each other, but stuck in a situation in which neither of us could grow as people.
⁴ This phrase from the Passover Seder Haggadah asks why is this night different than others. Many of us use it ironically to mean the opposite.
⁵ See my I Meet Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Ortega, and Archangels in a Bar, (friend link here) which draws from the works of Douglas Giles, PhD and Jodie Helm:
The Archangels, with Jodie as their channel, said regarding individualism:
“That is not the same as only caring about yourself and thinking you are more important than others…Individualism does not mean you only care about yourself and forsake all others….It does not mean you do whatever you want, despite the consequences….It means maintaining a healthy, balanced life and recognizing you are powerful and able to stand for your beliefs, regardless of whether or not they are widely accepted….Individualism means you think for yourself, rather than following the crowd.”
Now this is what I read from Douglas about some famous and not-so-famous deep thinkers on the same topics:
“We are each free individuals, Kant says, because our practical reason enables us to know ourselves as a free person who is able to make and commit to moral decisions. Moral decisions relate to the question, “what should I do?”
…
“Ortega saw human life is a dynamic dialogue between the individual and the world. Each one of us are individual humans who live in a reality of situations, people, and things. He said that every individual human life is a point of view directed upon the universe. Each person’s perspective is a component of reality, and all knowledge is knowledge from a definite point of view. Every truth thus connects to a person’s perspective placed in space and time. Ortega saw his perspectivist philosophy as expressing Einstein’s theory of relativity, replacing in philosophy the classical Newtonian mechanics from which physics had now stepped away.”
